During the war on terrorism, partnerships have come in many forms. Former FBI director Robert S. Mueller, III, spoke about the significance of partnerships as form of law enforcement cooperation. In the words of Mueller, “[In]… the FBI we’ve sent more than 275 extra Agents and support employees to help out overseas—to places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Canada, Germany, and Singapore.”[1] As to the importance of these relationships during the war on terrorism, Mueller asserted that with respect to our allies around the world, we “value your perspectives and your partnership.”[2]
Within the State Department this significant component of the foreign policy establishment, performs a critical function in establishing and maintaining many of the post-9/11 partnerships. The State Department spoke about the “strengthening coalitions and partnerships.” On this point, as quoted in the National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism, “continued success depends on the actions of a powerful coalition of nations maintaining a united front against terror.”[3]
This post addresses a rudimentary set of issues: (1) what partnerships have developed during the war on terrorism? (2) how effective are the bilateral and multilateral partners in carryout their responsibilities during the war on terrorism? And (3) Are partnerships effective tools in defeating terrorism?
Background
The United States has utilized partnerships to defeat adversaries during World War I, World War II, and during the Cold War. To comprehend the significance of partnerships during the Cold War, consider the following quote, “During the Cold War and prior to 9/11, the United States had developed what [Karl] Ikenberry labeled the “American System”, which describes US partnerships within the international order based on a framework of multilateral relationships”[4] that dealt with conventional threats.
There are two dilemmas associated with partnerships as tools of counterterrorism during the war on terrorism. In bilateral partnership arrangements, in just about every situation the US is forced to allow the host state to carry out many of the missions (at least initially). Second, the host state is often a weak or failed stated and they function with armed forces that have limited military capacities. Finally, given the weak or failed host state the US is often placed in the situation too increase the role in dealing with a “local” terrorist threat.[5]
In the multilateral variant, “the partners” that are participants in several “arrangements” in East and West Africa or those in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and those elsewhere around the world, have not been as reliable as previous American allies in confronting violent non-state actors. what were largely conventional military conflicts.
Bilateral Partnerships and the War on Terrorism
Most surprising, US bilateral relationships have not yielded the successes during the war on terrorism that were envision by American policymakers. The following quote exemplifies the point: “Unfortunately, as the United States has discovered in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq [prior to the Islamic State’s insurgency], working by, with and through others does not necessarily mean that a partner’s capability will improve or that they will share risks and responsibilities.”[6]
Other than the above examples, there are other bilateral relations that have proved problematic. In a major example, covering two administrations, one a Republican (Bush) and another a Democrat (Obama), they have had major difficulties managing the US-Yemen bilateral relationship during the war on terrorism. Under President George W. Bush, Yemen’s special forces were trained by their US counterpart with the objective the host government would be able to reverse the momentum built by the Al Qaeda Central affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Unfortunately, that did not happen, and AQAP continues to expand their sanctuaries in Yemen.
Under President Barack Obama, AQAP has used the Arab Spring and the civil war in Yemen to increase the size of the membership of organization. Equally troubling for the Obama administration, despite a dramatic increase in drone strikes, which killed the terrorist organization’s spiritual leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, and numerous other high value leaders, AQAP continued to expand their territorial reach within the country.
Despite the best efforts of two presidents, the bilateral relationship with Yemen exposed the limitations of US basic capacity building (BPC) and the inherent problems associated with the host state. On these points, Veneri argues “US capacity building efforts can be no more enduring than the available “construction materials” with which to build. Host nations must provide a substantial portion of the solution to any terrorist threat lurking within their borders.”[7]
On the exposure of US limitations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, consider the following quote that explicates that despite best efforts, the threat of terrorism in these partner states have been far from productive. Actually, “The US experience partnering with Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan has shown that sometimes partner relationships can be fickle. In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has proven to be [an] … unpredictable ally at least publicly, while Afghan security forces are only marginally capable after nine years of US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) mentoring. The Iraqi government ripples with sectarianism while ethnic strife plagues the country hampering both US and Iraqi government initiatives to improve governance, establish a stable economy and provide nation-wide security. While its government readily accepts US aid, the Pakistani government proffers a less than robust effort to squash the Taliban sanctuary in the North West Provinces and Federally Administrated Tribal Area (FATA) of their country.”[8] In the final analysis, the US has not been able to exercise its influence to the extent that the partners, and their local militaries, have been unable to contain terrorism within their respective homelands.
Multilateral Partnerships and the War on Terrorism
The multilateral partnerships in the war on terrorism represent a mixed bag. That is, there are several programs and organizations that are aimed at utilizing multilateral partnerships as an instrument to confront terrorism. This section explores some of the partnerships that have been used by President George W. Bush and Barack Obama as counterterrorism instruments in dealing with the threat of terrorism.
The Antiterrorism Assistance Program (ATA) is critical to financing counterterrorism partnerships around the world. The ATA is administered by the Bureau of Counterterrorism in the Department of State. One of the critical objectives of the ATA is to provide “training and equipment” to partners in 154 countries.[9] A second objective calls for the “prevention of terrorist attacks to responding to and mitigating terrorist attacks, ATA helps partner nations build critical capabilities across a wide spectrum of counterterrorism skills.”[10]
With the threat of terrorism coming to the fore in Africa, a host of partnerships were created during the administration of George W. Bush. A few examples are instructive. The Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) and the Trans Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) are two of the signature regional partnerships that were created under President Bush.
These two regional organizations were successful in several areas. Member militaries participated in multilateral training exercising that improved cooperation. Several members obtained bilateral military relationships with the American military that helped to contain the threat of terrorism in the respective regions. In some cases, member states shared intelligence and created cross border relationships that assisted in the decline of terrorism. Perhaps the most significant achievement is that each regional organization played a role in confronting disparate threats. The CJTF-HOA, principally Ethiopia with assistance from the United States, eliminated the threat posed by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).[11] Members of the TSCTP, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, with support from the United States, dramatically reduced the threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).[12]
In terms of training, the partnerships have had only minimal success. The central problem with the partnerships is that due to costs too few members of the armed forces of participating states in the CJTF-HOA and the TSCTP were permitted to engage in training. Another glaring weakness associated with both partnerships is the militaries of member states, much like their governments, were weak. Terrorist threats, Al Shabab in East Africa, and the purview of the CJTF-HOA or Boko Haram which operates in West Africa and in the purview of the TSCTP, along with smaller local terrorist groups, have caused instability in the regions of each region. Thus, member states have not met the expectations of the US government and the mission statement of the regional partnerships.
During the presidency of Barack Obama both partnerships continued to decline. Critics charged the decline in the significance of both partnerships is associated with President Obama’s failure to prioritize terrorism in Africa. Most notably, because of the emergence of a series of threats, many experts have questioned the viability of the TSCTP. Ansura, the Boko Haram splinter group, emerged and caused substantial instability. Ansar Al Sharia, which operates in Libya and Tunisia respectively emerged as a major terrorist group after the Arab Spring. In Mali, a plethora of Islamist groups from Ansar Dine, Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (Mujao), the Signed-in-Blood Battalion, and the Islamic Movement for Azawad (IMA) are just a few of the terrorist groups that have undermined the stability in that country. Not to be overlooked, AQIM’s revival caused consternation in expanding the “area of operations and mounting high-profile attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali.”[13] If you add the burgeoning presence of the Islamic State, it is little wonder that instability in the West and North Africa have reached a new level.
The US-led sixty-six-member Global Coalition to Counter ISIS is one of the largest partnerships assembled during the war on terrorism. The objectives of the coalition are based on “five mutually reinforcing lines of effort to degrade and defeat ISIS.”[14] Those lines of effort include: “(1) Providing military support to our partners; (2) Impeding the flow of foreign fighters; (3) Stopping financing and funding; (4) Addressing humanitarian crises in the region; and (5) Exposing true nature.”[15]
The coalition partners “are contributing to the military effort, by providing arms, equipment, training, or advice.”[16] In the end, the contribution is uneven. That is, despite the high number of members in the coalition, few states participate in the critical military aspects—launching air strikes, use of special operations forces, training members of Iraq’s military or local forces in Iraq (Peshmerga) or in Syria (Syrian Kurds or Syrian Arabs)—of the coalition.
Critics of the coalition charge “It seems that everybody wants the Islamic State destroyed”[17] but very few members, to include Arab partners and select US NATO allies, are willing to contribute special forces on the ground to confront ISIS in Iraq or Syria. In terms of the air campaign, very few states participate in bombing ISIS military vehicles, target high-value ISIS leaders, or are willing to launch airstrike against ISIS facilities or infrastructure. In a significant illustration of the coalition as constructed is problematic, in a National Security Presidential Memorandum, released to the public by the administration of President Donald Trump, the document calls for “new coalition partners in the fight against ISIS and policies to empower coalition partners to fight ISIS and its affiliates”[18] are to be created.
Analysis
Many in the counterterrorism community have a favorable disposition to the use of partners—bilateral or multilateral—to defeat terrorism which impacts regional and international stability. Currently, two terrorist entities, the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, fit into this category. In dealing with these twin transnational terrorist threats, the United States has relied on partners to confront these threats. The most successful partners are those that have been activity engaged militarily against a terrorist threat.
However, there are many states that participate in regional and global partnerships or coalition arrangements that do so without engaging in military missions against the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. In an example, in the global coalition against ISIS, many states provide financial assistance to Iraq while others provide weapons to Iraq’s military but they have not participated in any military engagements (either via airstrikes, the deployment of special forces, or the training of Iraq Security forces) against the Islamic State.
There are critics of the latter group of states. These critics argue the US must work to increase the building of partnership capacity (BPC). If that fails, there are those that argue these states should not be permitted to participate in partnerships against a terrorist group. For some, the BPC is necessary to prohibit the US from partnering “with a country that 1) it cannot influence, or 2) simply lacks the capability to be an effective partner.”[19]
There are issues within host states that will further impact capacity building and the role of partnerships in the war on terrorism. These issues include the presence of weak and failed states whose government status undermines the participation of these types of states in partnerships. The limited military capacities of numerous partner states undermine partnerships because inadequate armed forces of a state reduce or eliminates a states’ direct participation. These and other issues undermine the critical role and necessity of partnerships. While there are several examples of successful partnerships, they tend to produce short term and not long term victories, and often a terrorist entity may return (Al Qaeda in Iraq) in a far more dangerous form (The Islamic State).
Until the above issues are addressed, one should not anticipate that the US, and those states that participate in bilateral and multilateral partnerships with us, will ever destroy Al Qaeda or the Islamic State anytime soon. It will be interesting to see how President Trump’s manages the issue of partnerships and their role in the war on terrorism.
[1] Robert S. Mueller, III Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation Anti-Defamation League’s 24th Annual National Leadership Conference, Speeches, Washington, DC, May 7, 2002. https://arch ives.fbi.gov/archives/news/speeches/partnerships-against-terrorism.
[2] Ibid.
[3] National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, The White House, September 2006. https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/ct/rls/wh/71803.htm.
[4] Lt. Colonel Michael C. Veneri, PhD, “The Partner Predicament: US Building Partnership Capacity, the War on Terrorism and What the US Cannot Overlook,” Synesis: A Journal of Science, Technology, Ethics, and Policy (2011). http://www.synesisjournal.com/vol2_g/2011 _2_G7-17_Veneri.pdf.
[5] In one example, prior to the civil war in Yemen, the Obama administration dramatically increased drone strikes in that country. In a second example, after the weak and some would argue the failed state in Pakistan’s inability to deal with a host of terrorist groups in their mist, the Obama administration dramatically increased drone strikes.
[6] Veneri, “The Partner Predicament: US Building Partnership Capacity, the War on Terrorism and What the US Cannot Overlook.”
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Programs and Initiatives. The Department of State. Antiterrorism Assistance Program (ATA). https://www.state.gov/j/ct/programs/.
[10] Ibid.
[11] See John Davis, editor, Africa and War Terrorism (London: Ashgate, 2007), 205-210.
[12] See John Davis, editor, Terrorism in Africa: The Evolving Front in the War on Terrorism (Lanham: Rowand and Littlefield, Lexington Books, 2010), Conclusion.
[13] Jacob Zenn and Dario Cristiani, “AQIM’s Resurgence: Responding to Islamic State,” Jamestown Foundation, March 3, 2016. https://jamestown.org/program/aqims-resurgence-responding-to-islamic-state/.
[14] As listed in The Global Coalition to Counter ISIS, US Department of State, https://www. state.gov/s/seci/.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] As quoted in, Nancy Youseff, “Pentagon Insiders: ISIS War Plan is ‘Not Working,’” The Daily Beast, December 9, 2015. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/09/ pentagon-insiders-isis-war-plan-is-not-working.html.
[18] Presidential Memorandum Plan to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” White House, January 28, 2017. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/plan-defeat-islamic-state-iraq.
[19] Veneri, “The Partner Predicament: US Building Partnership Capacity, the War on Terrorism and What the US Cannot Overlook.”
